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Hey, I only downloaded OpenArena a few days ago though it seems in just about every other server I join someone asks how can you strafe jump (where people jump around and can move at over 3 times normal speed) and tbh most of the people that can are a bit poor at it, so here's a quick tutorial I'm making up on the spot =)... edit: and while making the strafe demos I decided to make it a general tutorial for people to learn the basicis so you now get other info too.

Firstly download this zip file containing some OpenArena demo files I made (http://www.sendspace.com/file/4gqgex (http://www.sendspace.com/file/4gqgex)). To play them put the dm_68 files in the demos folder located in your base OpenArena directory (for me C:\Program Files\OpenArena\baseoa\demos), and then from the OpeanArena main menu go to demos and choose the one you want (if you don't have a folder called 'demos' in your oa directory just create one). Also to play the first strafe demo you will need this map file (http://q3a.ath.cx/download.php/tr1ckhouse-beta3.pk3 (http://q3a.ath.cx/download.php/tr1ckhouse-beta3.pk3)). Place it in your baseoa directory and all's good (if you wish to play it type /map tr1ckhouse-beta3 in your console).

Now when in OpenArena bring down your console by pressing the ` key (next to the 1 on your keyboard) and then in there type the following:


All these values affect amoung other things how high you can jump, which in turn affects how quickly you can accelerate... the settings I have given you are the best for online play.

Alright, let's run down the list of stuff you should know...

Firstly strafe jumping. When stationary the first jump you take is called a circle jump. Start by looking 90 degrees from where you want to go (looking less will lessen your initial acceleration). Then hold down the forward key, and say you are looking 90 degrees to the right of where you want to go hold down the left strafe key also, then like I do in the demos smoothley turn to the left and once you've turned into the direction you wish to go, jump. You should travel further than a regular jump (as in if you just held down foward and jumped), this starts you off at faster than run speed.

Now to continue accelerating hit jump as you hit the ground and continue looking slightly to the left of the direction you're traveling in, while still holding down the forwards and appropriate strafe key (if you'r elooking to the right of your direction of movement hold down the right strafe key and visa versa). Continue doing this and you will continue accelerating, though you will also start travelign in an arc as opposed to a straight line. To correct this you have to quickly swicth to looking in the opposite direction and also changing which strafe key you are holding (this may be difficult at first). Also note the the angle you are lookign in is important, and gets wider the faster you go, use my demo as a guide.

edit: oh yeah, and don't hold down the jump key, the longer that's held down the less acceleration you will get. Idealy you want to hit jump just before you need to and release it just after you have jumped.

note: although a bit boring the BEST way to learn to strafe properly is on strafe pads like the ones you see my doing in the first strafe demo. Just load up the map tr1ckhouse-beta3 and have a go. The red pads are a good target to aim for but it may take a while.

Alright, rocket jumping... I think it's quite self explanitory, look down, jump and fire - make sure you don't fire before you jump as you won't get much height and just hurt yourself, though jump too early and you won't get enough height (you may  sometimees want to do this deliberatley). Just watch the demos I made - same goes for grenade jumping and plasma climbing tutorials =).

Okay, one more important thing while I remember - weapon switching. If you want to be good you should have every weapon bound to a different button, instead of using the mouse wheel. This way you can instantly switch to the appropriate weapon. The keys I use are:


You should also get use to constantly switching weapon in combat to an appropriate one, for example if you're using a shotgun and the enemy strafes out of range, switch to a more accurate weapon such as the machine gun or rail.

Oh, and also a few more console commands...


The first 2 you should experiment with. The default values are 90 and 22.5, I use 130 and 70. Most people use about 110 for cg_fov. What it does is affect your field of view (viewing angle) when looking normaly and zoomed in. The further out the more you can see that would otherwise be off screen, though objects also appear smaller, so harder to hit. The other commands stop the wobble you get when walking which helps a little with aim.

k.. I think that's a long enough essay for now =). I hope this helps someone, and if anyone has any questions, needs more explination on some area or wants me to make another demo to clarify something just ask. Ciao.

Very informative...so u only been in OA for a such a short time? What were u playing before?

I still am playing q3a defrag (vq3) and a small amount of q3a cpma (1v1 cpm).

Cool...btw, whats sensitivity level do you have it on?

Well my in game mouse options are:


Which translates to 4cm of mouse movement to turn 360 degrees (so I control the mouse with my fingertips and never move my wrist) with no mouse acceleration or smoothing. Quoting my sensitivity level of 12 doesn't really mean anything by itself as in game sensitivity is affected by the mouse you are using, your operating system settings and even the mouse pad you are using, which some peopel don't seem to realise.

4cm is a little on the high side of average but really there's no right or wrong sensitivity it's all personal preference, what you're used to and play style. I think movement is a little easier with a higher sensitivity where as having a lower sensitivity helps with aiming. Ofcourse you can be good at movement with a low sensitivity and good at aiming with a high one, just it will be a little harder I think. For example this (http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZlqJlUqz-hA (http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZlqJlUqz-hA)) video is of a good cpma (mod) player who also happens to use a very low sensitivity, see he can still move fine (the glove he's wearing is a low friction one to allow his arm to move easier). On the other hand I know a really good player who's sensitivity means he has a turning circle of about 2cm.

On a side note when I first started playing my turning circle was about 1cm (from starting to play I slowley cranked up the sensitivity when I got used to it until I was able to play with that higher setting), however as I started getting better I slowley started lowering it again to aid my aim until I reached my current setting which works well for me.

Anyway, if any new players are reading this my advice is - get used to using mouse acceleration. I don't use it as I'm not used to it, though I really think it would help as it gives you the aim of a low sens player with the movement of a high sens player, and a lot of the top players use mouse acceleration for this reason.

As an important side note make sure your mouse is right for your sensitivity. When buying a mouse the box will generaly quote the mouses dpi (dot per inch) and polling rate. A higher dpi is better if you're a high sensitivity gamer as the mouse is able to pick up movement over a much smaller distance so you can be more precise. On the other hand if you're a low sensitivity player you'll need a high polling rate as you'll be moving your mouse quickly over large distances and mice with lower polling rates won't be able to keep up and translate your movements to the screen accuratley.

...and it seems I've written an essay again :/.

(http://img160.imagevenue.com/loc1187/th_73105_circlejump_122_1187lo.jpg) (http://img160.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=73105_circlejump_122_1187lo.jpg)
i cant resist.. sorry yotoon! :D

And of course, big thank you to RAZ3R for all his advice, very kind of you

thanks for this!
is somebody maintaining the wiki ? i think it should be there :)


by the way:

/g_synchronousClients 0
/pmove_fixed 1
/pmove_msec 8

these variables are not in base openarena, i think only in some mods.

They are in baseoa but they are server side cvars, so setting them as a client only helps if you are training offline or hosting. And if you are hosting they will help all players or hurt all players if they are sat wrong.

Though fyi if you're playing offline or on lan you want pmove_fixed 0 and g_synchronousClients 1 :).

Also g_synchronousClients is not server side, try it while online. If set to 1 you will get a noticable ammount of lag while playing. The only time you'd want it on when online is if you're recording a demo, in which case if you're also playing you should set it to 1 then 0 again, which should synchronise your client with every one elses as the name suggests (not doing this will make any online demos look choppy).

i think i got hang of the circle jump but got a problem with landing and angle :S

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mN-RY47yMgQ

Nope, though even with g_synch demos may look jerky due to lag.

Just bind a key to record like this:

/bind o "toggle g_synchronousClients;wait 8;record;toggle g_synchronousClients"
/bind p "stoprecord"

and to help with lag make sure you have:

/cg_smoothClients 1

.

/cg_smoothClients 1

Says its an unknown command.

back in the days cg_fov was the most important command that let me learn strafe in q3. with cg_fov 90 u cant feel speed increase. i used 120 then, but now i use 110-115.

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Hi, The demo file is not available anymore, please upload it somewhere else.

Thanks.

sck Thomspson is one of the finest trick jumpers on this forum  Justr sesd him a pm to request demos

Ha, don't be mean =).

dash9: Yeah, I don't have them anymore I just recorded them specificaly for this thread and dunno what I did with them after that - maybe someone else still has them? I can't be bothered to rerecord right now anyway - though maybe I'll have a look later see if they're still on my computer.

What I think would be the most useful for learning these techniques is to be able to play with 1/4 of the speed, this would help a lot to learn the proper sequence of keys and mouse movements which have to be done. You'd even have time to look at all that information showed by the defrag mod. ;)

Is there a mod or a setting which give you 4 times more time to make your moves? It would be really awesome!

(I guess an alternative would be to change the value of the gravitation, but then you would need new training maps..)

in your console type:
timescale 0.25

I read the tutorial and I'm still stuck.  I still can't strafe jump. :\

"Sorry, the file you requested is not available."

Can you reupload the file?

Thanks for the tutorial, but i dont understand everything. I dont know what should i do. :S The problem is that i can speak english just a bit, but i would to be faster.

simple examples : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7568909271529243203&hl=en

Your fov make my eyes go blury :/.

fov? it's default. Its xvid video compression thats making your eyes blurry. :D

I know its crap

Raz3r doesn't have the demo anymore... does anyone have it?

I may have them. He probably only intended them as examples, lots of them can be downloaded from here http://www.breakdown-hq.com/

Check out the CeTuS jjm2 download, I don't think there's any other better example to demonstrate what is possible with use of strafe and weapons.

I'll have a look for Raz3rs, shouldnt be too difficult since I just need to check a rough time/date.

edit: ah. i see what you mean about the fov.. I thinks thats just nooby video editing as I probably saved it with incorrect aspect ratio which has that effect.

(I noticed when you record a demo with g_synchronousClients 0 it gives a warning: You should set 'g_synchronousClients 1' for smoother demo.)

If you toggle it back to 0 right after you start recording, it means the demo will be recorded with g_synchronousClients 0, not 1.

So the commands should be:
/bind o "toggle g_synchronousClients;wait 8;record"
/bind p "stoprecord;toggle g_synchronousClients"

Is this true, or am I missing something?

I assumed /record toggled the sync on then off or something, on earlier versions it wouldn't record unless sync was changed to manually. I know people who are ok playing and recording at the same time with delag and g_sync off. When it's on I get crap response on key presses.

Hi! A watched several tutorials how to strafe jump, and I thought I already can, but I always fall down on DeFrag maps like Run4 4T and Runstrafe3 after the first platform. My speed varies from 360 to 450. On some quake3 strafejumping videos you can see the mouse swinging from side to side but very fast. Is the mouse moving the key? How much speed do I have, when doing proper strafejumps?

The second jump is the hardest but once you get comfortable with it the rest is easy, it's just repetition.

Strafe jumping can be very over rated. You realise that when you get your ass kicked big time by players who move like they have been playing for a week. When playing matches try turning corners with a circle jump. You kind of feel the point where your speed increases. You also get used to it quicker without using defrag maps. You learn by repetition and then find defrag is alot easier. If your fps jumps up and down you can forget all about it. OA is heavily focused on eye candy and model detail. I think this bites into my RAM and uses more resources and as much as I've tried I've never quite got stability. What I could do on q3, seems impossible in OA. Maybe one day I'll be able to afford to upgrade my hardware. The model pak on OA is about 80mb or something similar. In q3 my model pak is under 5mb

oh.. and when you swing your mouse quickly, that's to get to the point of accelleration quicker. You don't stop and hold your mouse there though, you continue to move the mouse outwards very slowly and your acceleration increases at a slower rate, but you only need to do that on more difficult jumps. xcm_tricks2 is a great map for practicin.

Thank you for your help, I start to feel the rythm :). I found the strafejumping tutorials on Breakdown quite useful. First I didn't use the mouse, and later I turned it to squeeze out more UPS. xcm_tricks2 is great, I really found the running maps useful, where you can jump as much as you want, and there's no punishment. I think everybody should try to get over 1000 UPS there, and try the strafejump level after that.

With about 1200 ups @ strafejumping I think u can handle almost all hard CPM run maps.

Bumping with purpose.

Attached is a copy of RAZ3R's demo from the original post, as the link is no longer works, plus I renamed the files so they work in OpenArena 0.8.1 -- I think the originals were recorded on 0.7.1 but they work fine in 0.8.1

Cheers andrewj, have a cake.